1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of automatically creating control sequence software required for a machine system controlled by a computer and an apparatus for realizing the automatic creating method.
2. Description of the Prior Art
At the present time computer civilization advances, many machine systems are provided with computers, and the machine systems are controlled by the computers.
Description is made by taking a copying machine as an example. Electronic implementation and computerization of the copying machine have advanced, so that the operation of the copying machine is always controlled by a computer. In the development of the copying machine, therefore, not only the development of a machine portion but also the increase in the amount of work for developing software and particularly, control sequence software has become significant. This is one great cause of preventing work time and a development cycle from being shortened.
Therefore, some studies have been conventionally conducted to attempt to automatically create software and control sequence software. Examples are an article entitled "Toward Automation of Software Design" by Setsuo Osuga and Haruno Ri, Journal of Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 159-166, 1991, and an article entitled "System for Automatically Creating Sequence Control Software" by Yasuko Nakayama, Katsuya Sadashige, Hiroyuki Mizutani, Minemoto Izaki, Materials for Study Meeting of Institute of Artificial Intelligence SIG-KBS-9003, pp. 71-79, Institute of Artificial Intelligence, 1990. Even if techniques in the conventional studies conducted to attempt to automatically create software or the like are directly applied to a copying machine or a general image forming apparatus or other machine systems, however, sufficient results cannot be obtained. One of the reasons is that the conventional technique of automatically creating software is not integrated with a machine system CAD. That is, it is difficult to organically relate control sequence software automatically created to the mechanical technique of the machine system (attribute values of parts, structure information and the like).